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A familiar dilemma: You open Netflix, determined to watch something new. Twenty minutes of scrolling later, after having rejected dozens of perfectly fine options, you land on a movie you’ve seen many times before.
We do this constantly—rewatch TV shows, replay albums, reread favorite books until entire scenes or lyrics are committed to memory. Part of the reason is comfort. Familiar things require less from us; they deliver the emotional payoff we expect. But repetition is also a way of revisiting earlier versions of ourselves. Old songs, movies, and shows become emotional time capsules, preserving not just the stories but the person we were when we first loved them. “We like repeating pop-culture experiences because they help us remember the past, and the act of remembering the past feels good,” Derek Thompson wrote in 2014.
In a pop-culture era of infinite choices, there is something deeply reassuring about a story that ends just the way you expect it to. Trivial as it might be, that kind of familiarity can make us feel understood.
On Familiar Favorites
On Repeat: Why People Watch Movies and Shows Over and Over
By Derek Thompson
The glory of old films, memories, and the existential therapy of nostalgia (From 2014)
What Rereading Childhood Books Teaches Adults About Themselves
By Emma Court
Whether they delight or disappoint, old books provide touchstones for tracking personal growth. (From 2018)
15 Books You Won’t Regret Rereading
By Bethanne Patrick
Years after these titles were popular, they’re still worth picking up. (From 2022)
Still Curious?
- People underestimate how fun it is to do the same thing twice. It’s common to prize novelty in leisure activities, but research suggests that revisiting the familiar can offer unexpected pleasures, Joe Pinsker wrote in 2019.
- Why you can’t stop streaming Seinfeld. Or Frasier. Or Bones. In 2020, Sophie Gilbert wrote about the psychology of comfort TV.
Other Diversions
- The flip-phone cleanse
- Eight of the most fascinating biographies to read
- Theft is now progressive chic.
PS
My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “During a visit to the Monterey Aquarium, the absolute beauty of the effortless, elegant movement of the jellyfish was mesmerizing to me … I could watch ’em with total childlike joy for hours,” Barbara C. from Las Cruces, New Mexico, writes.
We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Rafaela
The post The Strange Comfort of a Rewatch appeared first on The Atlantic.
